Together this arsenal culminates into a sophisticated area-denial and anti-access strategy. Comments David F. Helvey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, to reporters, "The issue here is not one particular weapons system. It's the integration and overlapping nature of these weapons systems into a regime that can potentially impede or restrict free military operations in the Western Pacific. So that's something that we monitor and are concerned about."

In terms of hacking, the U.S. continues to accuse the Chinese military of an actively hostile stance. Comments Asst. Sect. Helvey, "In 2012, numerous computer systems around the world, including those owned by the US government, continued to be targeted for intrusions, some of which appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military. [This information] could potentially be used to benefit China's defence industry, high technology industries... and military planners."

Comments Asst. Sect. Helvey, "What concerns me is the extent to which China’s military modernization occurs in the absence of the kind of openness and transparency that others are certainly asking of China. And so it's that uncertainty, I think, that's of greater concern."

While the U.S.'s days as a space superpower appear to be waning, China is flexing its muscle in search for space supremacy. In 2012 it had 18 successful launches. U.S. intelligence says that these launches dramatically improved China's surveillance capabilities, communication capabilities, and navigation capabilities. Currently China's global position system (GPS) rival BeiDou only operates in Asia, but the company is constructing a global replacement dubbed COMPASS or BeiDou-2, which is expected to be complete by 2020.

Asst. Sect. Helvey adds, "At the same time, China continues to invest in a multidimensional program to deny others access to and use of space."

There are some signs of improving Sino-American relations; the nations tentatively agreed to conduct joint military exercises in 2014. And last September the two nations conducted joint anti-piracy exercises.

Thanks for the cool history lesson, but we're talking about what's happening right now as it is the topic of the article.

The reality is we are way ahead. China is trying to catch up. We've had carriers in quantities since WW2. We've sent men to the moon during the 60s and 70s. They're more than a couple decades behind and they're catching up by buying/stealing tech.

China does have the advantage when it comes to catching up. Computers are available globally and quite affordable. We had to develop our technology without the aid of massive computational resources available.

Everything you're saying about China, people used to say about Japan. A mere 2-3 decades later, and they were the advanced society while U.S. was transforming into a devolving backwater. The evisceration of U.S. continues to this day, with productive industry continually being replaced with debt-fueled consumers and servicers. Subtract out the ballooning deficits, and you get negative real growth ever since the early 1980's.

Most developed 1st world nations shows little to no improvenment in real gdp. Small amount of inflation is what driving our economy forward. It's a known fact.

China has plenty of potential and they are capitalizing on that. They are heavily utilizing their natural resources. They are increasing their money supply and lowering interest rates. Everything we did, eventually their debt will become just as high. They will only beat us if they can manage to raise their per capita high enough to collect enough tax. Right now our 300mil pop is outproducing China's 1.2 billion in GDP.

This is China's industrial revolution just like ours. What they do afterwards will determine economic dominance.